Deception in Harold Pinter’s the Caretaker (1960): Qualitative Content Analysis

Abstract

Pinteresque has attracted not only literary critics but also linguists to investigate the characteristics of that style. The present study aims at analysing the discourse of deception in Harold Pinter's the Caretaker (1960) from a linguistic standpoint. It emphasizes the forms of verbal deception uncovered from the characters' discourse by applying Grice's theory of Conversational Implicature (CI) that deals with the four maxims of conversation: quality, quantity, relation and manner. The analysed corpus is extracted from the characters' dialogues in which they overlook the four maxims; therefore, forms of deception are generated. The results are interpreted through a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), a research tool that examines language characteristics and contextual meaning; then, organized based on the framework of verbal deception suggested by Gupta (2013). Findings yielded from the analysis of the second chapter suggest that characters violate all maxims specifically relation; hence, contrived statement is the most generated form of deception.